“H’m! that alters the case. How is it, Byron? My nephew is studying law; he can tell you better than I can about it.”
Peternot thought this a good chance to bring the candidate for the winter’s school into favorable notice; and the candidate for the winter’s school made the most of his opportunity. He was a slender young man with a sallow complexion, a greenish eye, a pimpled forehead, and a rather awkward and studied manner of speaking. In rendering his opinion he was as prolix as any judge on the bench. He began with a disquisition on the nature of law, and finally, coming down to the case in point, said it would be considered a case of treasure-trove.
“What’s that?” Jack eagerly interrupted him.
“Then why don’t they say treasure found?”
“’Sh, boy!” said Mr. Chatford, good-naturedly, smiling at the youngster’s impatience of long-winded sentences and large words. “What’s the law of—treasure-trove, I believe you call it, Mr. Dinks?”
“I don’t think there’s any law on the subject,” replied the student of Blackstone, picking his teeth with a straw.
“No law! then how can such a case be decided?”
“Custom, which makes a sort of unwritten law, would here come in.”
Thereupon Mr. Byron Dinks became prolix again, speaking of English custom, which, like English law, creates precedents for our own country. The meaning of his discourse, stripped of its technical phrases and tedious repetitions, seemed to be, that formerly, treasure-trove went to the crown; that in more modern times it was divided—in a case like this—between the finder and the man on whose premises it was found; but that he didn’t think any precedent had been established in America.
“We’re about as wise now as we were before,” remarked Phin’s elder brother Moses, standing in the kitchen door.
Mr. Chatford gave him a wink to remain silent, and said, “How are we to understand you, Mr. Dinks? To use your own expression, A finds money on B’s premises; now what would be your advice to B?”
“Supposing B is my client? I should advise him to get possession of the money, if he could. Possession is nine points of the law.”
“Well, but if he couldn’t get possession?”
“Then try to compromise for one half. Then for a quarter. Then for what he could get.”